Page 56 of High Stakes

She banged her fist on the table, knocking over a candelabra. Enoch, Titus, and I jumped out of our seats and away from the table to avoid the teetering candle flame. “I have not created any such thing, and it is unfair of you to claim that I have!”

“Not yet,” he argued, pointing at himself and then me. “But you will. We wouldn’t have risked our lives to come here if you hadn’t.”

Terah pressed her lips into a hard line and looked at Enoch. “This conversation is getting us nowhere. They aren’t forthcoming about anything of importance,” she fumed.

“Calm down, Terah.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Enoch! They call us the creators of monsters, yet they have sorcery mounted in their hands. They’re the devils. I knew it the moment they stepped foot in the castle. You have to send them away... or get rid of them,” she finished menacingly.

Titus’s hand and mine instinctively found the stakes at our sides, preparing to pull them at a second’s notice.

Enoch stretched out his hands and beseeched, “Violence is not the answer, nor is sending them away. It is imperative that we understand many things that only they can teach us.”

“But they are not willing to help us learn!” she argued, eyeballing the stake curled in Titus’s hand. “His first reaction is to kill me.”

“My first reaction is to protect myself,” he fired back.

“Against what?” she scoffed, throwing her hands in the air.

“Against you!”

I righted the candelabra and set as many candles as I could back into their holders. “What are you doing?” Enoch whispered, a confused look on his face.

“Setting things right.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, knowing they needed proof of what they were to become. “This won’t be easy for any of us. We came here expecting you to be the people you are in our time, and we discovered that you’re not those people. We don’t understand why we were sent back to this time to target you, when it’s clear that you don’t deserve it yet.”

Enoch opened his mouth to speak, but I held up a hand, cutting him off. “And before you say you won’t become a monster, you should know that you do. You sired the vampire that killed my mother.” As the bitter words left my lips, my chest felt like it was caving in on itself.

“And you sired the vampire that slaughtered my entire family,” Titus continued softly to Terah, unable to keep the emotion from his voice. He wiped his mouth and threw his napkin down on the table.

Enoch and Terah locked eyes, trying to wrap their minds around what we’d told them. I needed to get out of there. I bumped Titus’s foot with mine and then stood up. “Thank you for a lovely dinner, but I think I need to go back to my room now.”

“Are you well?” Enoch asked, concerned, as Titus walked me toward the door.

“She’s fine,” he lied for me.

My tech had gone down again, and even my suit, which was working, wasn’t able to keep the tremors at bay. I couldn’t tell if I was freezing and getting sick again, or just panicked that I’d blurted out something so personal.

“Talk to me,” Titus whispered as the door closed behind us.

“I don’t know what to do,” my voice wobbled.

“That makes two of us.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The more distance I put between Enoch and myself, the calmer I became. The trembling eased, but I still needed space. More than ever, I needed room to breathe and time to think. Titus didn’t want to leave me, but I needed to be alone.

He told me five times he’d just be next door, to scream if one of the blood-suckers changed their mind about our deal. I promised to listen for his screams, too, and shoved him out the door, sinking back against it and letting the cool darkness envelop me.

When I was alone, I didn’t have to constantly be on guard. I didn’t have to wonder if Terah believed us, or if she wouldn’t care what we said and would tear my throat out just to get rid of the problem. There was something about her that set me on edge.

Terah in this time more closely resembled who she was in my time. That rang especially true with what Titus had witnessed. She wasn’t like Enoch. She seemed calm enough on the surface, but underneath, I could see a storm building.

The tech in my hand flickered weakly.

What if it failed completely? Permanently?

What if I got stuck here?

---